The Element of Fire (6 page)

"To accuse us of harboring Grandier." She made a gesture of exasperation, willing to be led away from the subject of her son's favorite. "And also to present a new list of their heretics sheltering in Ile-Rien, so they could be arrested and returned to Bisra to burn for their crimes. That the Bisran Inquisition has no authority within our borders is immaterial, apparently. I wish I knew why the ambassador is so certain that Grandier is here with our blessings." She coughed, and Lady Anne hastily produced a lace-edged cloth for her.

Watching her accusingly, Thomas said, "You're not feeling well." She had caught a lung flux last winter when they had gone to Bannot-on-the-Shore to quell a minor upheaval among the March Barons. Her vitality made it difficult to remember that she was not a young woman anymore, and Thomas still regretted allowing her to ride with the Guard instead of going in an enclosed carriage, even if it had let her surprise the barons in the middle of their secret conference. The disease had weakened her lungs despite the best efforts of apothecaries and sorcerer-healers, and she wasn't up to any more midnight rides over ice fields, whatever she might think. "You didn't have to see Dubell tonight, or the ambassador."

"It is very damp out, and you are not my nursemaid." She tucked the cloth into her sleeve, unperturbed. "I wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible. And if the palace wards are weakening..." After a moment, Ravenna shook her head. "And what do you think of Dr. Dubell?"

Thomas knew she wasn't asking about the old scholar's abilities as a sorcerer. "He's no fool. He handles himself very well."

"Lord Aviler, the old Lord Aviler, not that young puppy of a High Minister, had great faith in Dubell. Despite his past disgrace." She sighed. "But I've kept you long enough."

Thomas stood up, took her hand, and kissed it. She said, "Oh, and I'd almost forgotten." She rummaged in her sewing case, and pulled out a ribbon-tied packet of letters to hand to him.

"What is it?"

"An annoyance for you to deal with."

He accepted the packet with an expression of distaste. "And I was afraid I might have to sleep tonight."

"Oh, it isn't urgent. At least not to me." She smiled. "Enjoy."

Stepping out into the Guard Room, Thomas turned the packet over curiously. Ravenna never forgot anything; it must be something she didn't want to discuss. Before he could untie the bound letters, he saw that Galen Dubell was waiting for him. "A moment, Captain?" the old sorcerer asked.

"Yes?"

"Forgive me if the question is intrusive, but Lord Aviler does not care for you?" The High Minister had already gone, though Renier was still in the Guard Chamber, speaking quietly to the two Albonate squires.

"Lord Aviler is like that." Dubell's expression held nothing but mild curiosity. After a moment, Thomas found himself saying, "He doesn't approve of favorites. He's studied enough history to know what damage I could do if I were inclined to it."

"I see." Dubell smiled. "Does Queen Falaise still have her entourage of poets?"

Falaise had been a princess of Umberwald when Ravenna had chosen her to marry Roland a year ago. At eighteen she was four years younger than the King, and if Ravenna's motive in choosing her for a daughter-in-law had been to pick someone she could teach and influence, she had made one of her few mistakes. Falaise might have been the quiet studious girl that the ambassadors had described when she was a third daughter with few prospects, but once here and safely wed to Roland she had taken to palace life like a beggar child let loose in a bakery. "Yes, she does. City gossip reaches you all the way out in Lodun?"

"City gossip is a treasured commodity. The servants bring it in with the milk every morning. The general opinion, I gathered, was one of relief that she had chosen to turn her attentions to harmless poets, considering what else she could have done."

"She could have had guardsmen."

"Or sorcerers." Dubell's expression turned serious. "I owe you a great debt, Captain."

Thomas looked at him sharply. "I think you've already repaid that debt."

Dubell gestured that away. "Nevertheless, if I can help you in any way, do not hesitate to call on me."

As the sorcerer turned to follow the servants waiting to take him to his rooms, Renier intercepted Thomas. "There's something I have to show you." He looked worried.

Resigned, Thomas followed Renier to a quieter corner of the Guard Room. "What is it?"

"A letter. It arrived today in a packet of dispatches from Portier. The courier's a trusted man who swears he never let the packet out of his sight." The big man unfolded a square of paper. "This is a translation I had a priest do."

Thomas took the paper. "What language was it in?"

"Old Church Script."

Thomas read the first scribbled sentence aloud, " 'O Best Beloved'?" He looked up, puzzled. "To whom was it sent?"

"Roland. But the priest said that's the proper way to begin an old riddle-song, which is what this is."

Where the music is not heard,

There was a light not seen,

There are barren hills home to multitudes,

And dry lakes where fish are caught above a

city's towers. Catch the incantation, solve the song.

"The answer is a simple one: the Fay," Renier said.

There was only one person acquainted with Roland whose feelings would naturally express themselves in poetic forms of the past. "You know who this is from," Thomas said, looking up at him.

"The country folk are calling her Kade Carrion now." Renier shrugged, uneasy. "I suppose we're lucky; she could have sent something that exploded or told the secrets of whomever picked it up."

Roland's older sister, the bastard princess who had never forgiven anything. Thomas tapped the rolled paper against his palm. "An odd coincidence, with Galen Dubell here. Ravenna decides to pardon the man who first told the bane of our lives that she was a witch, and the witch herself starts meddling again." She had chosen her moment well.
We have more than enough to deal with from Grandier, and Kade is too dangerous to ignore.

"She's been quiet for almost six months. Why now?"

Across the room, a musician had taken a seat at the spinet and now played the opening verse of a popular new ballad, about a man who fell in love with a fayre queen and was taken away by her.
He couldn't have chosen an air more inappropriate to the moment,
Thomas thought. He said, "One hundred and ninety-seven days. I keep count. She might be in league with Grandier." Though Grandier had killed to protect himself, and Kade was rather like a cat--if the mouse was dead it was no good playing with it anymore.
But people change.

Renier shook his head. "There's not much else we can do. The sentry positions have already been doubled and tripled for Grandier's sake." His eyes flicked up to meet Thomas's. "Dubell is going to tend the wards."

"Yes, he is, isn't he?"

"We've nothing to go on."

Thomas handed him back the letter. "Watch him anyway."

AT THE FIRST creak of the door, Thomas was up on one elbow and drawing the main gauche from the belt hung over the bedpost. Then he recognized the man entering the room and shoved the long dagger back into its sheath. "Damn you, Phaistus."

The young servant shrugged and knelt beside the hearth to scrape the ashes out, muttering to the unresponsive andirons, "Well, he's in a mood."

Thomas struggled out of bed. Despite the high ceiling and the natural tendency for drafts, the room was almost too warm; daylight shining through the high windows was reflected dazzlingly off the whitewashed plaster of the walls. His scabbarded rapier leaned against a red brocaded chair and his other three civilian dueling swords hung on the wall, along with the heavier, broad-bladed weapons used for cavalry combat. He ran a distracted hand through his hair, working the tangles out, and said, "What's the hour?"

"Nearly midday, Sir. Ephraim's outside. He said you wanted him. And Master Lucas brought that Gambin fellow in."

"Good." Thomas stretched and grimaced. A few hours of sleep had done little besides give his bruised muscles time to stiffen. While Phaistus banged things on the hearth, he found his trousers and top boots on the floor underneath the bed's rumbled white counterpoint and started to dress. "Clean that pistol."

The servant stood, wiping his hands on his shirt tail and glancing over the draw table where Thomas had left his wheellock and reloading gear. "Where's the other one?"

Thomas grabbed up a pewter jug and threw it at Phaistus, who ducked, grinned, and went on with what he was doing. Phaistus had come to the Guard House as a kitchen boy, silent and terrified, but had grown out of it before his voice changed. "I obviously don't beat you enough." Thomas went to the table and pushed back his sleeves to splash water on his face from the bowl there.

Undisturbed, the boy asked, "Going to kill Gambin, Sir?"

"It's a thought." Deciding he could wait to trim his beard. Thomas picked up the scabbarded rapier and went into the small anteroom.

Ephraim was waiting for him. He was a little old man, the pockets of his faded brown doublet and breeches stuffed with sheaves of paper, the ballads he sold on the street. His stockings were mud-stained and one of his shoes had a large hole in the toe. He grinned and pulled his battered hat off. "You wanted to see me, Captain?"

"Someone sent a packet of letters to the Dowager Queen through Gambin. I want you and your people to find out who hired him."

Ephraim rubbed his grizzled chin. The best of the civilian spies Thomas employed, Ephraim was discreet enough for the occasional official mission as well as for Thomas's own needs. "That could be difficult, Sir. That Gambin lad hires out to so many there's no telling whose business he's on today, and he mightn't have a reason to go back to the fellow, you know."

"Gambin's here now. I'll make sure he does."

"Ahh. That's a different matter. The usual wages?"

"A bonus if you find out by tomorrow."

"Oh, I can't make any promises." Ephraim looked flattered. "But we'll do our poor best."

Thomas left him and went down the staircase toward the clash of steel and loud talk from the large hall on the lower floor. The old, rambling house stood just inside the Prince's Gate, where it was dwarfed by the bulk of the King's Bastion and the Albon Tower. For seventy years the house had been the headquarters of the Queen's Guard and the property of whomever held the commission of Captain. The carved knobs topping the stairway's balusters were gashed and chipped from practice bouts up and down the steps, and the walls still bore the faint scars of powder burns from more serious skirmishes.

The Queen's Guard were all scions of province nobility or second sons of landed families, with few expectations of large inheritances. The requirement for membership was a term of service with a crown troop, preferably cavalry, and an appointment from the Queen. In general the Queen's Own were unruly and hard drinking, and carried on jealous and obsessive rivalries with both the Cisternans and the Albon Order. They were also the most effective elite force in a country where until a few years ago private armies had abounded; commanding them had been Thomas's only ambition for a long time.

As he reached the second-floor landing, Dr. Lambe was just coming out of the archway that led into the other wing. Dressed in a stained smock, the apothecary was followed by a young boy weighed down with various satchels and bags of medical paraphernalia. Thomas asked Lambe, "Did you see Gaspard?"

"I did, Captain, and I'm not sure I believe it." Lambe adjusted the cap on his balding head. Apothecaries prepared the herbal remedies used by sorcerer-healers, and many, like Lambe, also made good physicians, even without any sorcerous skill. Healers learned in magic were in short supply everywhere but in Lodun, where the university drew them by the dozens.

"What do you mean?"

"The burns are scarred over already." He shrugged. "I knew Galen Dubell had a reputation for healing-sorcery, but what did the man do?"

"Whatever it was, he did it quickly. He used some things Braun had."

"Dr. Braun's not so bad." Lambe caught Thomas's expression and added, "He's not a steady sort, I'll give you that, Sir, but he has the makings of a fine practitioner in him. But this work of Dr. Dubell's... It would be an honor to hand the man bandages."

Thomas watched Lambe go, thoughtfully, then turned into the small second-floor council room where Lucas waited for him.

The dingy walls were hung with old maps and a few tattered remnants of flags, some of which were trophies from the last war, while others were more recent acquisitions from the Cisternan Guard, who would undoubtedly give a great deal to learn where they were. In the glass-fronted bookpress were classical treatises on warfare, manuals of drilling, musketry, fencing, and tactics,
The Compleat Body of the Art Military
and
Directions For Musters
. Lucas, the First Lieutenant of the Queen's Guard, was leaning back in a chair, nursing a tankard, his boots propped up on the heavy plank table beside a wine bottle and another tankard.